NAME: Afful Christian

ID NUMBER: 030915206

Real World Case One

FedEx Corporation: Investing in Information Technology for
Competitive Advantage in a Dynamic Global Environment.
1. How do the IT investment strategies and focus of FedEx and
its main competitor UPS differ? Which company has the better
strategy? Why?
Ans:
It basically differs, in that UPS being the major competitor to
FedEx said “They are going to invest significantly” which I think
is only based on operational technology. FedEx rather turned it
around saying “we will focus slightly less on the operational
technology and little more on revenue generating, customer
satisfaction, strategic advantage technology etc. I suggest FedEx
has a better strategy over UPS because they had this
philosophy which came out in the Marine Corps from the early
days which stated, “Move, Communicate, and Shoot”. So once
something new is launched, they make sure it is following
directly behind someone or is very near to someone in rank in
order to move forward.
2. Is FedEx’s “move, communicate, and shoot” IT strategy a
good one for its competitive battle with UPS? Why or why
not? Is it a good model of competitive IT strategy for other
types of companies? Defend your position.
Ans:
Yes FedEx’s IT strategy is good one for its competitive battle
with UPS. A good IT strategy has to tackle five competitive
forces that form the structure of competition in its line of
business. The organization that effectively overcome
 Rivalry of competitors
 Treat of New Entrants
 Threat of Substitutes
 Bargaining power of customers
 Bargaining power of suppliers
Seem to gain competitive advantage on its rival after
formulating a strategy that tackles all the above mentioned
which in one way or the other FedEx does. And
Yes it is a good strategy for other types of companies since the
“Move, Communicate and Shoot” is basically a differentiation
and innovation strategy. It focuses more on customer based
technology and less on operational support technology. Once a
new innovative and different service or product is launched,
companies will soon follow. So the company has to shoot it
service and move on to the next one and the cycle goes on.
3. FedEx CIO Carter says his company is in the business of
engineering time. Is this a good business vision for FedEx?
Why or why not? How vital is IT to this definition of FedEx’s
business? Use examples from the case to illustrate your
answer.
Ans:
Using examples from the case is a product FedEx developed
called Insight. The insight was a system designed to function as
a tracking mechanism so that as opposed to having to track a
package, you say” I want to know what is being shipped to me
today” you can go out there now and see every inbound
package, regardless of whether you know someone was
sending it to you.
Another example from the case is a company that does bone
marrow sample testing for bone marrow transplants. Getting
those samples is a very painful algorithm for the donors
involved, and the viability of that sample is only about 24 hours.
They would send out kits to collection places, and they never
knew exactly how many would be coming in on a given day.
Using Insight, very early in the morning they can see every
inbound kit that is heading to them and staff appropriately to
get every one of those tests done, because the last thing you
want to do is run out of hours in a day and have to re contact a
potential donor and say, “Do the test again.” Because it is not a
fun test.
From the above, I confidently can say that FedEx indeed is in
engineering time and is a good business vision for the business.
For any business to progress in this recent times, it should be
able to generate outstanding schemes with the use of IT in
order to gain competitive advantage to its competitors as well
as improving customer relationship
Real world case two
GE Energy and GE Healthcare: Using Information
Technology to Create Strategic Customer Relationships.
1. What are the business benefits of using information
technology to build strategic customer relationships for GE
Energy and GE Healthcare? What are the business benefits for
their customers?
Ans:
Information technology makes the business process much
simpler and easier. In every organization, customer satisfaction
is very important which connects to the growth of the business.
In the case of GE-Energy, the utilization of information
technology to build a customer relationship made the business
profitable due to high maintenance facilities. Quality of the
service they provided upgraded and they enjoyed wonderful
customer relationships. As a result of customer dependency for
their products they were able to tie pricing benefit to their
business. It also generated an occasion as to building customer
trust towards their products and service for GE Healthcare, due
to the investment technology made for network monitoring,
diagnostics and data analysis of the use of its products at
customer sites throughout the world saved its cost, improved
the quality and uniformity of the information and goodwill of
the organization.
And most importantly its customer relationship became
stronger because of its ability to reach customers at any part of
the world. Customers equally saved their cost and increase the
productivity and profitability of their business.
2. What strategic uses of information technology discussed in
this chapter and summarized in Figures 2.3 and 2.5 do you see
implemented in this case? Explain the reasons for your
choices.
Ans:
In the case of GE Energy and GE Healthcare, innovative use of
the information technology is followed. They created new
scheme leading the market in their sector through the use of
information technology.
Their online facilities and different assumptions regarding the
service they provided made them distinct and successful in
providing new type of service to its customers lowering cost on
both theirs and their customers.
They also created the virtual image of their organization as a
result of following the Alliance strategy.
3. How could other companies benefit from the use of IT to
build strategic customer relationships? Provide or propose
several examples of such uses. Explain how each benefits the
business and its customers.
Ans:
In real fact, every business can benefit from the use of IT to
build strategic customer relationships. Celebrated or well noted
business people in the world strongly believes that customers
are the most important asset to every business organization. So
they need to prepare themselves with high maintenance and
service facilities in order to keep them. With the use of
Information technology in strategic customer relationship
management, they can ensure their efficiency and effectiveness
by living up to the expectations of their customers. By so doing,
cost and time of the customers are saved as well as the quality
of their products and services are improved.
A typical example here in Ghana is a Tele-communication
network Expresso, who is noticed to be incompetence in terms
of their inefficient customer relationship management. One
major reason for their customer dissatisfaction is their
irresponsible customer relationship management system. In
order to enhance their service and regain the customer trust,
they ought to focus on effective management of their system
by making the optimum utilization of available resources. By
the use of information technology in customer relationship,
Expresso and its customers can have some benefits including;
 Increase in quality of information provided and decrease in
cost of information management.
 Time saving and increased productivity.
Real world case three
GE, Dell, Intel, GM, and Others: Debating the Competitive
Advantage of Information Technology.
1. Do you agree with the argument made by Nicholas Carr to
support his position that IT no longer gives companies a
competitive advantage? Why or why not?
Ans:
Nicholas Carr main point is that Information technology is
nothing more than the infrastructure of modern business.
Basically, I think Carr misunderstands what information
technology is because he literally thinks it’s merely about
network and computer.
Not really in support with the argument he made to support his
view that Information technology no longer gives companies a
competitive advantage. He could also be right to some extent
but it may not be right to compare information technology with
electricity and transportation. It been so common that
everybody uses it (electricity and transportation) and it is the
infrastructure that every business build in order to run the
business.
2. Do you agree with the argument made by the business
leaders in this case in support of the competitive advantage
that IT can provide to a business? Why or why not?
Ans:
Business leaders in the case are the ones who have stationed
information technology in their business in order to get
competitive advantage as well as other benefits from
information technology. They have very strong and practical
opinion about importance of information technology for
competitive advantage in business. As they pointed out,
information technology is not only about what you are using it
for but is also about how you are using it. How much to spend
in it as well is the important question to answer before going
for a technology. Business cannot face the competition if it
does not have complete information about every single thing
that matters and information technology makes it possible to
get that information in systematic way when required. So I
agree with the argument made by the business leaders in this
case in support of the competitive advantage that IT can
provide to a business.
3. What are several ways that IT could provide a competitive
advantage to a business? Use some of the companies
mentioned in this case as examples. Visit their Web sites to
gather more information to help you answer.
Ans:
In making the right decisions in a competitive business
environment, business organizations can benefit lots of
competitive advantages through the use of information
technology. The listed below are some basic strategies in the
business use of IT.
 By the use of IT, business organization can considerably
reduce the cost of business process and enjoy the benefit
of being low cost producer in the environment.
 Business organization can use IT to differentiate their
products or services from other competitors by developing
new IT features to differentiate products and services.
 Business organization can use IT to create new products
and services that include IT components and also make
radical changes to business processes with IT that
dramatically cut costs, improve quality, efficiency or
customer service or shorten time and market.
 Last but not least, business organization can use IT to
develop Alliance as to creating virtual organizations of the
business partners, customers, suppliers, competitors and
consultants.